Supreme Court Convenes to Crowded, Controversial Docket

[Hissyspit]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Supreme Court convenes to crowded, controversial docket
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, October 1, 2007

After moving to the right on such issues as school integration, abortion and campaign finance regulation in its last term, the U.S. Supreme Court may be about to veer leftward as it begins a term highlighted by a clash over the rights of captives at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The names are unchanged on a court widely viewed as the most conservative since the 1930s. But legal commentators say several major cases on the docket for the term that starts today, and others likely to be added, raise issues in which the liberal justices in the court's minority bloc have a good chance of picking up a crucial vote from Justice Anthony Kennedy, who rarely sided with them last term.

Those cases include a test of judges' authority to reduce the disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine, a dispute over the evidence allowed in job discrimination suits, and the battle over the scope of capital punishment. The court will review a challenge to states' rules for lethal injections and may revisit the question of death sentences for crimes other than murder.

- snip -

Most prominent among those cases is a challenge by inmates at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo to a federal law limiting their access to courts. In 2004 and 2006, Kennedy joined majorities on the court that rebuffed the Bush administration's claims of unlimited authority over prisoners in the government's war on terror. The 2006 ruling struck down military commissions established by the Pentagon to try Guantanamo prisoners. In response, the then-Republican-controlled Congress passed a law last fall that authorized the commissions and barred inmates from going to court to challenge their confinement, a right held by other U.S. prisoners.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/01/MNRTSFG6H.DTL

[onehandle]

1. US Supreme Court's swing to right-BBC News (Overseas, where they tell it like it is)

Whatever decisions the court reaches, analysts agree that it seems likely its shift towards the right will continue - and that that could be the longest-lasting legacy of President George W Bush's second term in office.

snip...

The new session will be the second full term with Chief Justice John Roberts at the helm and newest addition Samuel Alito in place.

Both were nominated by Mr Bush and both have consistently voted with the court's other conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.

snip...

"The court is nearer to having an authoritative conservative majority than at any time in decades."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7021922.stm

[BlueIris]

2. Thanks for that REALITY CHECK.

Anyone who thinks the Court is moving "leftward," especially with regard to the slimy, duplicitous, corrupt Anthony Kennedy (who is as much a pawn of the far right as the other agents in the conservatic bloc) is a goddamned moron.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. This is were the failure of the Dem leadership

will really come home to roost.

Expect non-stop 5-4 rulings pretty much all in favor of the Bush police state.

It is the failure of the leadership to filibuster Alito and Roberts which will make any victories in 2008 completely useless.

The only way to undo this damage is to impeach Thomas and Scalia over "Bush v. Gore", and that is just not going to happen.